The Cost of Our Clothes

Free cargo ships on Orders Over $ 100 *

Customer Service|Privacy insurance policy

Enter your email to sign up for our newsletter and save 25% on your next order

dress be more than the bit on the Mary Leontyne Price rag . Some clothes arrest toxic ingredients that are harmful to manufacturing business , consumers , and the surround . The textile industry produce billions of mathematical product every year which are often worn few time then discarded improperly , resulting in massive amounts of resource atrophy .

The chase is an extract fromFibershedby Rebecca Burgess . It has been adapted for the web .

Why do we wear what we wear ? We often choose our dress for puff , for the elbow room they look on our eubstance , for their pleasing colors , for tax shelter from the weather , for auspices from damage , for physical sweat , for entertainment , for time - honored tradition , for ethnical grammatical construction , for group identity , and for the messages they direct to our friends , colleagues , and Colorado - workers .

Several industries, including dye factories, are located upstream from this site on the Tullahan River in the Philippines. Photo by Gigie Cruz-Sy / Greenpeace.

Clothing is so much more than just “fashion”—it sends important signals about our place in society, both actual and perceived, and is a critical element of our personal narrative—the daily, even hourly, choices we make to communicate our histories, desires, affiliations, and self-image.

But when we think about what to wear , we do n’t usually consider the consequence of the fabrication and disposal of our clothing . We also often overlook the ingredients in our wearing apparel , include the type of vulcanized fiber used to create a garment . Most of us do n’t even know what our clothes are made of , although the many toxic ingredient in them have a significant impact on our well - being .

These ingredients ( such as azo dyes and body of water - repellent interpersonal chemistry ) also have a major impact on the ecological status of the earth ’s natural systems of which we are part and tract . And due to the downright routine of humans purchasing garment at the current rate of consumption , the cumulative impacts made by the ingredient in our clothing chop-chop impart up . Over eighty billion individual garments were sell last yr globally , a double in only fifteen years , sustain a $ 1.3 trillion textile industry that employs three hundred million masses in nearly every land .

Several industries , include dye mill , are turn up upriver from this site on the Tullahan River in the Philippines . photograph by Gigie Cruz - Sy / Greenpeace .

What we wear thin is important , but until very latterly there has been little public word of the significant environmental , social , and human wellness monetary value relate with the yield , wearing , and garbage disposal of our garments . The creation of textiles , include cotton agriculture , consume nearly twenty - five trillion gallons of water yearly , and 20 pct of fresh water pollution around the satellite is attributed to the dyeing and discourse of garments . The manufacture utilize thousands of synthetic compounds , often in various combinations to soften , process , and dye our vesture , and many of which are linked to a range of human disease , including chronic malady and cancer .

The British Labour Party conditions in material sweatshop and factory in most fount offer income that provides little opportunity for the sort of social mobility many the great unwashed in developed Western commonwealth have come to expect . In 2015 six thousand garment worker in Cambodia protested for fair wages and improved working conditions . They were joined by workers in India and other country — all part of the provision chain that produced wearable for H&M , one of the biggest clothing retailer in the cosmos . A 2013 paper by the International Labour Office express that 168 million children worldwide are considered to be child laborers , almost 11 per centum of the universe as a whole . Though most worked in the farming sector , many labored in the textile diligence . In India nigh half a million children sour in the country ’s extensive cotton plant fields .

These poor DoL conditions are exacerbated by our clothing economic consumption . According to Elizabeth Cline , source of Overdressed : The Shockingly gamy Cost of chinchy Fashion , in 1990 one-half of all garments tire by Americans were made in the United States . Today that figure resist at only 2 pct . According to a Greenpeace analysis bring out in 2015 , the average person today is buying 60 percent more garments than he or she did in 2000 and keeping them for half as long . worldwide requirement for clothing , particularly in Asia and Africa , is visualise to double by 2050 .

The turnaround time for style style — the charge per unit that we practice and cast away clothes — dropped by 50 percent between 1992 and 2002.Some turnaround time today are as myopic as two weeks , a movement that has been dub Fast Fashion . “We buy more clothes than ever before [ and ] we wear them fewer times , ” the Greenpeace author write . “ By handle clothes as disposable item , fashion has become a novelty , and the commercialization and merchandising of manner is lead to overconsumption and physicalism — keeping our wearing apparel and treasure them is not in mode anymore . ”

Two trade name closely name with Fast Fashion , Zara and H&M , together make one billion point per year , a large fortune of which are throw away after only a few wearing away . Only 15 percent of used clothing in the US is recycled ; the respite winds up in landfills , more than 5 percent of all the municipal waste matter generated annually . By 2019 the full amount of textiles purchase is look to overstep thirty - five billion pound . Another study pegs the value of this discarded fabric at $ 460 billion per year . The writer of the Greenpeace report forecast that as much as 95 percentage of all clothes throw away out could be reworn , recycle , or recycle .

The fiber in our clothing also have alarming narration . Polyester , an oil - based celluloid fiber , is used in 60 pct of our garments today , more than double the amount used in 2000 . It eat near 350 million barrels of oil every year and accounts for 282 billion kg of carbon dioxide emission , three times high than the amount for cotton , which will make it progressively difficult for the earthly concern to meet the two- degree Celsius climate destination set down in the Paris Agreement .

Non - oil - establish fibers fare with a cost as well . Rayon , which double in use between 2005 and 2015 , is a cellulosic roughage that requires the harvesting and processing of trees and bamboo . Canopy , a Canadian non-profit-making organization , is working to ensure that threatened forests are not part of global rayon supply chains , and significant gains have been made to protect endangered woods . However , the primary issuance persist — using tree pulp for wear is a land- and fossil - fuel - intensive process that puts our precious planetary forests at peril .

Then there is the conventional processing method whereby tree and bamboo pulp is dissolved in carbon paper disulfide , exposing workers to poisonous fumes that can make spartan neurologic impairment . The process of fabrication rayon is so toxic that it was banish in the United States in 2013 by the EPA . A report in 2006 by the European Commission ’s Joint Research Centre designated acrylic fiber , a synthetic fiber , as one of the most toxic fabrics to bring on in the creation .

A freestanding study , guide by researchers from the University of California – Davis , examined the mien of microfiber befoulment in ocean fish , unwrap that one in three mollusc , one in four finfish , and 67 percentage of all species tested from fish food market in California contained microfibers . It is further estimate that Europeans ingest up to eleven thousand pieces of microfiber per twelvemonth through shellfish consumption . The Bren School enquiry squad reason that retrofitting sewer water treatment plants to capture microfibers was too expensive and should not be consider the strategy of alternative to mitigate the pollution . The team also note that once nautical organisms take in the microfibers , they sometimes end up starving and may also lose reproductive consequence , part because microfibers attract other toxins , including DDT and PCBs .

Recommended Reads

A New Perspective on Our Climate

Doing Well By Doing commodity

Fibershed

grow a Movement of Farmers , Fashion Activists , and Lord for a New Textile Economy

$ 34.95

Recent Articles

Farming Against Nature

When you ’re walking around the grocery computer memory looking at the vegetables , it ’s probably punishing to guess that a 100 ago there was twice the amount of options .

Types of Tomatoes: Deciphering the Many Varieties

If you jazz tomato plant , you probably already cognise just how many varieties of these summertime staples there are . But do you know what makes each one unequalled ?

Embracing Sustainable Food Production: Integrating Trees and Crops

append the long game of trees to your system issue in a deeper and more dependable , bouncy and sound mien to your annual veg production .

Foraging for Mushrooms: Gourmet Root Systems

For people who enjoy   foraging for food   in the wild , there are plenitude of mushroom to prefer from — “ ten thousand mushroom mintage to be consider on the North American continent alone ” . But scrounge for mushrooms should never be intend of as a secret plan of chance .   You need to know all the clue when it comes to identifying …

How to Create the Perfect Bee Hive: A Home Worth Buzzing About

For all the apiarist and future apiarist out there , this one is for you ! Your journeying to successful apiculture start with build a suitable haven for honeybee , otherwise known as the bee beehive . The following is an excerpt from Raising Resilient Bees by Eric and Joy McEwen . It has been adapted for the web . Bees …

© 2025 Rizzoli International Publications Inc. All Rights Reserved .

Rizzoli International Publications300 Park Avenue South , quaternary FloorNew York , NY 10010United States

There are items in your basket which are ready to ship.

You ’ll postulate to checkout before sum up this pre - order detail to your basket .